The cathedral was finished by the westernmost bay of its nave, its capacious porch, and the southwest tower, under Bishop Étienne de Nemours (1188-1222), who had three brothers, also bishops and builders, at Paris, at Meaux, and at Châlons, the sons, all four of them, of a lord chancellor of France. In Noyon, Bishop Étienne was a sound administrator; he was favorable to the municipality, regulated the town’s moneys, and built a hospital. Philippe-Auguste sent him to Denmark to escort to France the unfortunate Princess Ingeborg, who was to be his second wife. The bishop was buried as a benefactor in the abbey of Ourscamp, four miles from Noyon, farther down the Oise, which house was a foundation of Bishop Simon de Vermandois, though only vestiges of its XII-century parts remain.[46]
During the last decade of the XIII century a terrible fire raged for two days in Noyon Cathedral. The vaulting throughout the church, save in the choir aisle, had to be reconstructed. For the sexpartite system, which embraces two bays, and has six branches from the keystone of each vault section, was now substituted the barlong plan, where diagonals cover one bay. The early-Gothic architects took up with enthusiasm the Normans’ sexpartite plan, but after using it for half a century they most sensibly returned to the quadripartite system as better suited to their needs. The sexpartite vault calls for piers of alternating strength, since on the heavier pier fall diagonals and transverse arch, and only a transverse arch on the intermediate pier.
Noyon Cathedral had from its start planned for a sexpartite vault by building its ground supports of alternating strength. Its piers, therefore, became illogical when a barlong vaulting was erected after the fire of 1193. And one regrets that it has not its original stone roof, since the correlations in this hardy first cathedral are elsewhere very perfect. Throughout the church are details of subtle charm. There is a slight bending out, like a horseshoe, of the archivolts of the pier arcade, which archivolts are severely plain. Usually from the abacus of a main pier rise five clustered shafts to the level of the vault-springing, two to catch the diagonals, two for the longitudinal or wall arches, and one for the transverse arch. Noyon showed constructive agility in concentrating its wall ribs and diagonals on a single shaft, which meant only three clustered colonnettes from main piers to vault-springing.
Each cathedral in France possesses a few traits peculiar to itself. Noyon is unique in having both ends of its transept terminate in hemicycles, like a Rhenish church.[47] The Romanesque school of the Rhine had derived the feature from the early chapels of Rome. Probably Noyon’s transept apses came from retaining the foundations of the previous cathedral. A church which was long in the jurisdiction of Noyon—the cathedral at Tournai—still possesses its Romanesque transept with semicircular ends. Cambrai Cathedral, destroyed by the Revolution, once had a similar pre-Gothic transept; its choir, built from 1220 to 1237 in the golden day of the national art, was an irreparable loss. Noyon Cathedral showed another Germanic trait in what may be called a western transept, made by the lower stories of the façade towers and the middle section of the first bay.
The nave of Noyon is a noble vessel, with an interior four-story elevation of happier proportions than was achieved in the transept. No longer do annulets bind the clustered shafts, thus breaking the ascending line as in the choir. Throughout the church is to be found the simultaneous use of round and pointed arches, and, curiously enough, it is the lower stories, pier arcade, and tribune, that used the pointed arch; in the triforium and clearstory the arches are semicircular. Everywhere the sculptured capitals are of rare beauty. The Romanesque acanthus leaf is found in juxtaposition with the Gothic crocket.
Noyon is exceptional in having retained its annexes: the treasure hall built by Bishop Baudouin II, the chapel of the episcopal palace, a half-timber library, and a beautiful chapter house (c. 1240). This latter, opening on a fragment of the cathedral cloister, is a hall divided into two aisles by a row of slender pillars, the type preferred by the French, whereas in England the circular hall whose vault ribs were gathered on a central pier was more popular. Noyon’s chapter house was built by Bishop Pierre Chalot, who died at sea, off Cyprus, on St. Louis’ crusade of 1248.
When in late-Gothic times Noyon was adding chapels and side aisles, her master-of-works was Jean Turpin, who at Péronne—pitiful Péronne la Pucelle entirely a ruin to-day—erected a Flamboyant Gothic church which was a veritable gem.
The battle of giants, foreseen in the poet’s dream, twice engulfed Noyon during the World War. From the first occupation by the enemy the city escaped without serious injury. Then in March, 1918, began the Germans’ desperate advance on Paris. At the end of the month the mayor of Noyon quitted the city, the last to leave. And in September he was the first to re-enter Noyon after the second battle of the Marne had driven back the invaders. He found his town a ruin. Not a single building had escaped injury, and only ten days earlier a photograph taken from a French airship had shown that the Renaissance Town Hall and Noyon’s chief square were intact; few monuments had suffered from the occasional bombardments by the Allies. The Hôtel de Ville had been built in the dawn of the classic Renaissance, and its fine façades retained much of the Gothic spirit. Before their departure the invaders blew up the town; not even Calvin’s birthplace was spared. Hardly 10 per cent of the houses of this amiable little city that asked only to be left unmolested by the fever and fret of new things are to-day worth reconstruction.
As if by a miracle, the cathedral and a side street named for the old goldsmith bishop, St. Eloi, were preserved. The cathedral roof is pierced by shells in a dozen places and the northern tower and the porch between the towers are smashed, but the interior is but slightly damaged. In one of the side chapels a vandal fired his pistol many times at a picture of the Saviour. Perhaps it was the memory that Noyon’s rounded transept ends and forechurch were Germanic which saved the cathedral. Better is it to remember by a Radegund, by a Charlemagne, than by Odin and Thor.